Motivation impacts student academic performance. A performance task to directly assess writing motivation in young children is needed. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the validity of the Writing Challenge Task (WCT), a task-oriented assessment created to measure writing motivation with 106 kindergarten students in the rural…

This study explores the relationship between the three elements of the Community of Inquiry (teaching, social, and cognitive presences) and video-based instruction in the online environment. The video-based instruction included instructor-created videos and screencasts, video feedback assignment critiques, video-enhanced content discussions, and…

Technology use in education has grown at a rapid pace throughout the last decade. However, the COVID-19 pandemic created a lasting impact on technology use for instruction in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade (PK-12) classrooms and college courses. This creates an even greater need for preservice teachers to be provided with opportunities to…

This paper reports on a qualitative study of 13 bilingual paraprofessionals at a university in the USA enrolled in a second language acquisition class that was part of a professional development programme. Drawing on socio-cultural theory, the study focused on documenting how the paraprofessionals negotiated the academic demands of a hybrid online…

In the Winter of 2020, my introductory Canadian politics class started to develop its own online, collaboratively-built, open-access, introductory "textbook" on Canadian politics. Drawing on the principles of critical pedagogy, the assignment engages students in group work to generate plain-language primers that can connect with an…

Owing to the fact that all educational activities have been moved to an online setting due to restrictions to control the spread of the Corona Virus, the realm of education has been subject to unprecedented changes. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the perspectives of freshman English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students and their…

Purpose: This paper aims to offer a case study for teaching specific systems thinking competencies that promote leadership for systems change. It uses leadership as a novel way to identify and organize systems thinking competencies that are important for successful multistakeholder collaboration. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative and…

This article describes a literacy methods course designed to introduce reading specialist candidates to research-based practices for comprehension instruction. Specifically, this article focuses on a sequence of assignments and class sessions within that course that introduced theoretical perspectives about comprehension processes and how those…

The aim of this research is to examine the pre-service teachers' opinions on online assessment during the COVID-19 process. In the study, which was designed with a phenomenological design, data were collected from 138 teacher candidates with a structured interview form consisting of open-ended questions created by the researchers and analyzed by…

Problem-solving is an essential undergraduate learning outcome that also supports students' professional success. The creative problem-solving model (CPS) (Isaksen et al., 2011) facilitates the development of these skills and aligns well with the scope of public relations (PR). The current study investigates student perceptions of an assignment…

In this study, we introduce a framework designed to help educators assess the effectiveness of popular generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in solving authentic assessments. We employed Bloom's taxonomy as a guiding principle to create authentic assessments that evaluate the capabilities of generative AI tools. We applied this framework…

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, students at a land-grant university in the southeast region of the United States transitioned to online learning. After transitioning online, faculty noticed a lack of student engagement in online courses that reduced retention rates and increased failure rates. Although prior research showed the benefits of…

Background: Traditional teaching methods of biochemistry provide effective tools for knowledge transmission, but are considered less engaging with students. Smartphone applications may provide suitable alternatives to compensate for the shortcomings of traditional teaching methods. Purpose: This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of…

This study sought to increase awareness of ADHD though the context of a school assignment completed by a student with ADHD. The student (pseudonym Jim) sought opinions of 67 Australian school students with ADHD between 11-16 years to investigate their schooling experiences. Findings revealed that schooling mostly was a positive experience due to…

Plant-derived natural products are an important source of potential medicines and continue to have a major impact on the drug discovery process. Natural product discovery assignments provide an opportunity to present various experimental techniques to undergraduate students in introductory medicinal chemistry. This assignment was developed to…